Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michelle Ngo. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Michelle, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

I had been racking my brain for about a week to find a clever name for my small business and suddenly one day, ‘Ms.shells Madeleines’ came to me as a shower thought. As soon as it formulated in my head, I knew immediately that it was the winner.

Why? Well because my name is Michelle and Ms.shells is a word play on my actual name itself. The ridges on a madeleine look like a seashell. I wanted something dainty and proper to emulate the composition of this cute little pastry, so the ‘Ms.’ before the ‘shells’ was just perfect!

I also wanted to incorporate French into the name, to pay a nod to the madeleine pastry’s origins. I almost settled with ‘Madame Madeleines’, since the word ‘madame ‘translates to ‘Mrs.’ in French. However, Michelle is actually a French name so using ‘Ms.shells’ was able to accomplish both of my wishes!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

What had originally started as an activity to relieve the daily tedium during lockdown has since bloomed into a full-blown flourishing passion! In the beginning, I dabbled around with different pastries ranging from cookies to cakes to macarons, but the one pastry that finally received my mothers’ praise was none other than the madeleine. Since it received the elusive maternal blessing, I started baking said madeleines with varying flavors and designs. After months of experimentation, ms.shells madeleines officially launched in December 2021, serving freshly baked madeleines to the greater LA area!

I especially wanted to incorporate unique and Asian inspired flavors! I’ve been doing pop-up market events and hope to build deeper connections with the community and continually strive to deliver new and exciting goods.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

One of my most memorable pop-up events was when I was a vendor for a well-known market that took place in July. There were many many odds:
1. Doing a pop-up event outside in the summer heat is every vendors nightmare, especially for a dessert vendor because the pastries can potentially melt and not look as appetizing.
2. The market fee was extremely high and I had to bake multiple times more batches of madeleines than my other usual events, just to break even in profits.
3. All the other vendors had a huge following, making me second guess myself on whether this was the right place for Ms.shells Madeleines.
4. It was my birthday month and I had so many things going on already, making me question if I truly had enough time single-handedly pull off a huge event like this.

Alas, I went against the odds and signed-up anyway. I ended up pulling an all-nighter to bake from dusk until dawn. Despite being semi-delirious and running solely on coffee, I was able to not only break even but make decent sales.

Furthermore, I was able to get my name out in front of thousands of market attendees. Later down the line when I would randomly mention Ms.shells Madeleines to strangers, to my surprise, some people would be familiar with the name.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

For Ms.shells Madeleines, a massive amount of time goes into prepping the batter and preparing each individual madeleine mold before it even goes into the oven. Once out the oven, each madeleine is decorated with care and packaged. Washing the madeleine pans and scrubbing each and every individual mold (usually hundreds) is the definition of resilience in itself. The sponge needs to go into each ridge and crevice on the pan, and scrubbed vigorously until your fingers hurt since they aren’t dishwasher safe – this is the bane of my existence.

Small business owners are also incredibly resilient. I have a deep respect for those who willingly put their business out there at pop-up markets. So much happens behind the scenes for these small business owners that I hadn’t fully understood until I had become one myself. Those who are vendors at pop-up markets do tons of prep work in advance, wake up early and arrive at the venue space to pitch their tent, unload everything from their car, and set-up their stall before markets even begin. Once the market has begun, it is showtime – you have to stay alert and try to attract customers, in hopes of breaking even (in the least ideal scenario) or strive to sell out (in the best case scenario). The show goes on for hours with hopeful anticipation, and when the market draws to a close, everything is packed up once again sometimes in disappointment and sometimes in happiness. Small business owners who sell perishable goods encounter an additional struggle if they don’t sell out the end of the event because the goods cannot be saved or resold at another event. Often times, these owners just take the loss and pick themselves up for the next pop-up market.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ms.shells

Image Credits

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